LWA Cae Tan interview

Where are you?
Gower, Swansea

Online at www.caetancsa.org/en

Size and type of farm
8 acres over 2 sites - horticulture

Established
2014

Legal structure
Company Limited by Guarantee. Grower led CSA where all growers (3) are directors. There are also four non-grower directors with business skills such as accountancy, membership and volunteer management etc.

Direct Sales Model
CSA veg box scheme.

We sell our boxes directly to 126 households in the Gower area, most subscribers pay up front on a monthly basis, though some pay upfront at the start of the year. We harvest veg on a Wednesday and Thursday. Boxes are packed at our hub on a Thursday. The hub is hosted by a grower or trainee every Thursday between 4.30-6.30 and remains accessible afterwards. Members collect between Thursday and Sunday. Other producers pre-sell eggs, meat and bread to our members at the hub. We seek to grow everything for our members for 12 months of the year. We generally have to buy in some basics, such as potatoes, carrots and onions for 6 weeks during the hungry gap, but we think we can close this gap completely with good storage and winter tunnel use.

Number of staff
7 staff members. This includes 5 growers who are full time, apart from over winter when they are part-time. There’s also one Education Officer, and one Accounts, Fundraising and Membership Manager. We have hosted 1 trainee each year and so far have employed or supported all but 1 of these to become a new grower locally.

Annual turnover and average surplus (profit)
Up to £65,000 a year for veg and salad shares, plus additional funding for education streams which varies according to funding availability.Annual surplus is generally under £1000 once all costs are covered.

Why have you chosen this model and what are the main benefits?
Cae Tan seeks to grow really good food for a small group of local people, engaging this community in the realities of growing through volunteering, newsletters, social media, meeting and talking to them at the weekly veg pick up, social and educational events. We seek to create a connected community around our veg growing and the CSA model is essential to helping us build that community. Beyond this we engage local schools in this discussion, with 150 young people visiting the farm each year. This model really helps to create a sense of togetherness and wellbeing for us, which we just wouldn’t be able to achieve with selling to supermarkets or a couple of shops.

Beyond supplying our 126 current households with seasonal veg for 12 months of the year, using agroecological methods, there are other environmental benefits. We have no food waste as we’re growing to order, and any boxes that get forgotten at the end of the week go straight to a food charity. Boxes also allow us to minimise packaging and deliveries, which simultaneously reduce resource use and also give us more time to do the important work of growing, stewarding our land and building community. It is physically and emotionally demanding work. But overall it is incredibly rewarding and life affirming.

What are your essential tools/equipment/pieces of software?
• Good land is obviously essential and it will be really beneficial to get as good a piece of land as you can, as close to a population as you can. We calculate that 250m2 per full share household is enough to grow veg for each share all year. You can also start out by growing on a much smaller area, buying in the bulk veg and just growing the expensive leaves, tunnel crops etc.

• Having a good online payment system that is adjustable by the CSA is really useful. This makes it much more efficient to manage prices and payments with all members at once.

• We’ve a small fridge to keep some perishables fresh over the collection window of thursday-sunday, but also communicate to members that we can’t refrigerate everything so they know to pick up their veg sooner if they want to keep it fresh!

What are the key factors that helped with development?
Having good people skills and communication channels between the staff team, directors and members is very important. We empower one another by trusting each other and allowing each other to take initiative and make mistakes. Having someone whose role is around admin and money management has been extremely helpful and frees up time for the growers. We’d also really recommend visiting other farms and asking lots of questions!

At the beginning, we accessed social and capital grants for the first few years to get things going without grower burnout! It would be extremely useful to have more Government support and training for new entrants. After new entrants or existing farmers have trained in operating a CSA with us, they should be able to access tapered government funds to establish their own enterprise. This would pay for capital items and ideally cover a part time wage to get going.

What has been the impact of Covid-19 on your business and how did you adapt?
We were already nearly at capacity at the beginning of this year, but increased our subscription to add in 10 new boxes. However we have a waiting list with over 80 people on it, and know that there is more demand than this. Our main strategy has been to work on training so that we can support more growers to set up businesses in the Gower area to meet this demand. In 2021 our main grower will reduce hours on actual growing to increase time spent on training systems to support new entrants into agroecology. So far we have supported 3 new entrants into gaining work, and we hope to help many more.